Dozens of parents and their children on the autistic spectrum will travel to Jerusalem this morning to demonstrate in front of the Ministry of Social Affairs to protest the closure of the Ibn Chen school, which serves 55 children on the spectrum and low and medium functioning. Chen Amira, mother of 12-year-old Netta, who attends the school: "They put a sword around our necks. On September 1, our children will stay home."
Even Chen is a supra-regional school for children aged 21-6 who are on the autistic spectrum and defined as low and medium functioning, and is located in the village of Bnei Zion in Rosh HaAyin, which also operates a daycare center for the sheltered. About a year and a half ago, a serious case of abuse at the shelter in the village was exposed, and as a result, the association that operates the village and the school was replaced.
Chen Amira and her daughter Netta, photo: courtesy of the family
The Ministry of Social Affairs informed the parents of the children attending the school that it would be evacuated and moved to another location in order to expand the shelter.
No solution
Over the past year and a half, no suitable alternative structure has been found, and at the start of the next school year, if no solution is found, dozens of children and their parents will remain at home. According to Elad Katz, chairman of the parents' committee and father of a 10-year-old girl who studies at the institution, who participated in the search for a suitable structure, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services proposed alternative structures that are not suitable for their children's school buildings.
Among other things, they were offered to move the school to an abandoned building in a noisy industrial area in Rosh HaAyin, to an abandoned banquet hall on the second floor without a courtyard, or to an old building that served as a Bezeq switchboard.
None of the alternatives is suitable for serving as a school building, let alone for children on the autistic spectrum who need special conditions to learn, acquire life skills and advance. "The opacity cries out to the sky," he says.
The situation of the children attending school is complex: almost all of them do not speak, are not rewarded, and need close individual guidance - any change in their routine is critical and causes severe regression.
"The most vulnerable population"
"We're hysterical. We cry out and no one hears us," Chen says, adding: "Children who are at the edge of the weakest population are not thrown out. Children like ours, the only thing keeping them sane is routine. My child doesn't walk in the door she doesn't know. These are children who cannot express their difficulties and who have not been accepted to special education schools because an individual program needs to be adapted to them in order to advance them." "Every child like that who stays at home, that means the parents stay home and don't go to work," she said.
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The Welfare Ministry said in response that "the ministry agreed to the request of the company operating Elor for a one-year delay in evacuating the compound, even though its franchise was revoked after the Bnei Zion affair. This is long enough to find an alternative solution, and we regret that nothing has been done.
"We call on the Ministry of Education and the Rosh HaAyin Municipality to get to the bottom of what is happening and find an alternative structure so that the best interests of both the residents of the daycare center and the schoolchildren will be preserved."
The Education Ministry said: "The request to close the school came from the Ministry of Social Affairs. The Ministry of Education is working in all the ways at its disposal to find a solution for populating the school."
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